Knit Your Own Murder (22 page)

“I try to make it so,” Dr. Seely replied, smiling.

“What kind of hazardous material do you handle?”

“Anything, really. Disease germs, outdated prescription medicines, poisons, even small amounts of radioactive material. We have this whole building all to ourselves. It's an interesting job, and quite safe, if you're very careful.”

“So, how do you dispose of such dangerous substances?”

“We sort it, seal it in drums, and send it to a special kind of incinerator that burns very hot, destroying everything, even the drums themselves.”

“With extra-good scrubbers on the smokestacks,” suggested Mike.

“Yes, indeed.”

“Interesting that you knew Harry Whiteside from years back,” Mike went on. “I'd like to talk to you about him.”

Dr. Seely started to say something, then changed his mind and asked instead, “What's your interest in Harry?”

“I'm investigating a murder, and it's just barely possible that Harry is involved in it.”

“Indeed? I thought it would be Harry's murder you were interested in.”

“No, his murder is being handled by the Wayzata police. This is a second murder, of a woman, that happened around the same time. She was bidding against Harry for some property. Did Harry happen to mention to you anything about this bidding war?”

Frowning, Dr. Seely shook his head. “We didn't discuss business, except in very general terms.”

“How did you come to hire him?”

“As I told you on the phone, we became friends here at
the U when we were both pre-law students. I went on to get my JD, and he got a master's in architectural design. We stayed in touch, but only casually—he was a difficult person, you see. I found him . . . manipulative and sometimes bad tempered. But he was also very amusing, witty, fun to be around.

“Well, as it happens, we ran across each other at a Golden Gophers basketball game back in February, and he mentioned that he'd installed a sprinkler system in a warehouse and his foreman—his
former
foreman, that is—had ordered half again the number of pipes needed for the job. Funny how that sort of thing can happen, his having extra pipes and us needing them.”

“He didn't by chance know about your need for pipes before he told you this story?”

“Oh no, not at all. He told me the story first, and I said how interesting that was, because we needed new pipes to replace some corroded ones in our building. I suggested that perhaps the University could buy them from him at a discount, him being an alum, you see. Because most of the building and repair on campus is done by employees of the university. And he seemed open to that. Sometimes, though, we farm out a job, and it turned out that we needed to farm out this one. So I told him never mind and explained why, and he asked if he could submit a bid. I said he could, and I recommended his company, and he put in a nice, low bid and got the job.”

“Was his work satisfactory?”

“Oh yes. But I'd forgotten what a son of a bitch he could be.” Seely shook his head. “He complained the whole time because he had to carry an ID card and swipe a pass card
every time he came in. ‘You'd think you're storing nitroglycerin in here,' he said.” Seely winked. “I didn't tell him we had a package of bubonic plague germs on the counter right under where he was complaining to me about our stringent security methods.”

“Where in the building did the pipes get replaced?” asked Mike.

“Come on, I'll show you.”

He led them past two very large doors beyond the glass room. They led into yet another big room, and at the far end of it a sliding door was raised. Betsy could see the back end of the trailer of a semi truck up against it. Parked near the trailer's back end was a bright yellow forklift truck.

“We're about to send out a shipment to be incinerated,” Seely said.

“Where's the incinerator?” asked Mike.

“This shipment's going to Saint Louis.”

“Kind of far from here, isn't that?”

“Well, there aren't many of those incinerators in the country, and the one that's nearer, in Illinois, is backed up. Believe me, things are packed very thoroughly. Our packaging can survive even a rollover.”

“Good to know,” observed Mike.

“Come on. The pipes were replaced in here, where we pack things up.”

He led them through a door high and wide enough to easily accommodate the forklift. In the first room—there was a second room beyond it, where Betsy could see row upon row of big blue barrels—was a small enclosure with a big metal hood over it. “We open some packages in there,”
he said. “The ventilation system sucks up vapors very efficiently.” He made a gesture that took in the whole room. “This is where Harry did his work for us.”

Betsy looked up but didn't see any new pipes. Dr. Seely saw her looking and said, “He painted them to match.” The room's ceiling had the same complement of many colored pipes as the other.

Its walls were lined on three sides by a deep shelf about waist high. On the shelf were shoebox-size packages wrapped in brown paper and a few open boxes holding small bottles in Ziploc bags.

Curious, Betsy dared approach the shelf—though she stopped short when she saw that each wrapped package had a big black-and-white
HAZARDOUS MATERIAL
sticker on it. She came back to stand near Mike. This was a dangerous place.

“It's safe to go for a look,” said Seely, amused. “Just don't open anything.”

“Don't even touch it,” warned Mike.

Betsy went closer and saw that most of the bottles in the open boxes looked like prescription bottles, though one had a chemical formula on it: HCN.

Mike, who had come along with her, said, “What's HCN?”

“That's cyanide,” said Seely.

“Whoa!” said Mike.

Someone with a sense of humor had put a green Mr. Yuk sticker on it, next to the skull and crossbones sticker.

“Do you get a lot of poisons?” asked Betsy, and Mike cleared his throat warningly.

Seely nodded. “We got a lot of everything. Mostly
outdated medicines, though. When you think how much prescription medicines cost, it breaks my heart to see how much of it gets thrown away.”

“I assume you keep careful track of things like that,” said Mike. “I mean, someone could come by and just pick up a bottle of outdated penicillin and take it home with him.”

“It would have to be someone who works here,” said Seely. “We don't allow non-employees to wander around unaccompanied. And look at this.” He went to the counter and pulled a two-page packing slip from one of the open boxes, one white and one yellow, “See, the sender writes down what's in the packet and how many bottles of it there are. And our packer checks it off, making sure the bottle matches the description and that the number of bottles is correct.”

But Betsy had got the bit between her teeth, and she pressed, “Does anyone ever make a mistake? I mean, the shipper writes down three bottles and there are only two in the box?”

Seely gave Betsy a long look.

But Mike said, “That's a good question.”

“Okay, sometimes—
not often
—mistakes are made,” he said. He repeated it. “Not often, you understand.”

Betsy and Mike nodded.

“How does it happen when it does?” Mike asked.

“The guy packing things up over in the lab—this is the lowest-grade job a grad student can have, you understand—goes to pack up three bottles and can only find two, and he'll scratch a line through the three and write two and initial the change. Or someone here, unpacking, finds two bottles and the invoice says three. It could be just a case of
bad handwriting—a two looking like a three—but it could be a bottle got misplaced, or the chemist decided he needed one and took it back. Now my guy is supposed to call the lab and run down the person who did up the package, but it's time to quit and he's tired, so he'll draw that line through the number himself and make the three a two. It can happen. But you've got something specific on your mind. What do you think went missing from here?”

Betsy looked at Mike, who said, “A bottle of nicotine.”

*   *   *

“O
kay,
it's a possibility,” said Malloy in the car on their way back to Excelsior, “but how do we prove it?”

“You'll have to go back through those packing slips,” said Betsy. “That card Doctor Seely swiped coming in, he told us it tracks him, records the day and time every time he passes through. He said everyone, employee, subcontractor, everyone has to use that tracking card. You heard him tell us that Harry complained about having to swipe a card every time he came in. So you look through the packing slips that came in on the days he was here and see if there's not one for nicotine that has a line through the number of bottles.”

“Do you know how much time that will take me? They must get dozens at least every day.”

“I'll do it. Get me access, a search warrant, whatever it takes. I'm way long overdue for a vacation, Mike. Hire me and I'll spend it at the Safety and Environmental Protection building. I'm sure I'm right.”

“And so what if you are? We don't need to do this, you know. Every possible suspect has been cleared; no one's in
danger of arrest. According to you—and I agree with you—the likely perp is dead.”

“But people will talk if this isn't cleared up. They're already talking. Half the town thinks Joe's gotten away with murder; the other half thinks Chaz did it. This can destroy their lives. You can't let this go, Mike. You can't.”

*   *   *

B
ack
in his little office in Excelsior, Mike called Wayzata PD and asked to speak to the chief of detectives, Andy Taylor—and yes, he took a lot of hazing over his name, thanks to the old
Andy Griffith Show
that featured a small-town sheriff with the same name.

“I've got a little problem I'm hoping you can help me solve,” Mike said after the usual introductions and pleasantries were exchanged.

“What's your little problem?” asked Captain Taylor.

“The investigator in charge of the Harry Whiteside case was given a piece of information, and because it came from a private citizen over here in Excelsior, he's dismissed it. Even after I suggested he follow up on it, he has taken no action. Now I'm well aware that we cops don't like interference in a case—”

“You got that right, for sure,” interrupted Taylor, who did not sound the least little bit like his far friendlier TV namesake.

“On the other hand,” Mike went on, “Larabee is stymied, and it's possible he's ignoring a very solid lead.”

“Well, what is it?”

“That he should have the DNA of Maddy O'Leary compared to that blood sample collected at the Whiteside
house.” Mike explained Betsy's—and his own—reasoning for doing so.

“So why has he turned it down?”

“Because the suggestion first came from, as he puts it, an old spinster seamstress.”

“Are you talking about that woman, Devonshire, who owns a needlework shop over in Excelsior?”

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Damn nosey parker interfering amateur.”

“Yes, sir, that describes her pretty well. The problem is, she's right a lot of the time.”

“Yeah, that's the word I've gotten about her. Not from my juice monkey, of course.”

“Juice monkey?”

“Larabee. He's a weight lifter, and he's bulked up so fast the past year or so I suspect he's using steroids. Sometimes called juice.”

“Ah, juice monkey. Now I see.”

“And I've noticed that steroid use shrinks the brain while it swells the abs. Okay, I'll order that test. And thank you, Sergeant Malloy, for calling this to my attention. I'll let you know if it checks out.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

A
week
later, Mike got a forwarded e-mail with an attachment originated by the undergrad the University had hired to comb through the file of packing slips at the Safety and Environmental Protection Facility.

Is this what you're looking for?
the young woman had asked Dr. Seely.

And, sure enough, the attachment was a color copy of the yellow packing slip used by the University. It showed that three one-ounce bottles of nicotine—two full, one reduced to .63 ounces—were sent to be safely disposed of, but the numeral 3 had a diagonal line drawn through its box and the numeral 2 written in beside it. The box was further crowded by an illegible scribble meant to be someone's initials.

The date on the slip indicated that the box had been packed on March 9 of this year and opened at the facility on March 11.

Harry Whiteside had worked at the facility from March 7 through March 17.

Mike called Dr. Seely.

“I was about to call you,” Dr. Seely said. “I checked the security records, and Mr. Whiteside was here the day the packing slip was changed. Moreover, no one I've spoken to can identify the initials on the changed slip.”

Mike would have preferred to check out the initials himself, but considering the careful attitude of Dr. Seely, that would be duplicating an already thorough effort.

So as far as he was concerned, Harry Whiteside was guilty of the murder of Maddy O'Leary. He went into his computer and pulled up the file on the case and added a brief note to Dr. Seely's report, printed out the whole thing, and hand carried it down the hall to Chief Haugen's office.

Chief Haugen was a tall man nearing fifty, thickening in the waist. A square-faced towhead with very chilly light gray eyes, his blond hair was almost unobtrusively turning white. He was taciturn by nature, and he merely nodded at Mike coming into his office.

Mike said, “Good afternoon, sir,” and put the report on the chief's desk.

“He was a quick study,” said Mike, after Chief Haugen read the report. “It only took four days for Harry to discover the weak spot in the control system that made it possible for him to take a little bottle of nicotine without being detected.”

“But did he take it?” asked the chief. “Has the stolen bottle been found in the vicinity of Harry Whiteside?”

“No, and we won't find it,” said Mike. “Anyone with a
room-temperature IQ would know to get rid of it in a way that it would never be found. Anyway, if you think a search should be made, the person to ask is Sergeant Larabee of Wayzata PD. It's his case. I hope you don't want me to ask him, because he blew up all over me when I suggested he have Maddy O'Leary's DNA compared to the blood sample sorted out from the mix found on that doorknob. I had to go over his head to their chief of detectives, Taylor, and ask him to order it. I almost think Larabee's madder at me because they found a match than he'd be if they didn't.”

“What made you think to suggest Maddy O'Leary's DNA might be in the Whiteside house?”

Mike fell silent for a few seconds. Then, because the chief was amazingly perceptive and Mike was basically honest, he said, “A private citizen talked to me about it.”

“Is she a resident of Excelsior?”

Mike sighed. “Yeah, she is.” Haugen kept looking at him, so he reluctantly continued. “This woman found out that Harry Whiteside got a job replacing some pipes in the hazardous waste disposal building on the U campus. Harry and Maddy O'Leary have been at loggerheads for years, and when she got in ahead of him on the Water Street property, he was over-the-top pissed. At that hazardous waste building he saw a banquet of poisons just sitting there waiting for him to select one. So he decided he didn't have to share the world with her anymore and acquired some liquid nicotine, which he poured onto some yarn she was going to knit in public at that toy auction.”

“That's this woman's theory.”

“Well, yeah. But the evidence supports it.”

“Is she the same person you took with you to that hazardous waste facility? And who suggested that we check the packing slips?”

“Well, I was already thinking we should do that.”

“That was your thinking.”

“Yessir.” Then he added hastily, “But I'll admit she thought of it, too. Actually, maybe she thought of it first.”

“And you think maybe I should call a news conference and explain all this to reporters, making the two of us look like fools who needed the help of this amateur to solve a murder.”

“Yessir, except you can leave out the part about us looking like fools by leaving out her role. That's what I'd suggest. Sir.”

“Why should we do this? Why not just say the case is closed?”

“Because there's gossip all over town that maybe Mr. Mickels or Mr. Reynolds got away with murder, and I think it's irresponsible of us to allow that if there's any way to clear them.”

“Uh-huh, you were thinking that.”

“Well, she's thinking that, too. And, okay, she told me I should think of it. But it's true, I had someone tell me to my face it's a shame we haven't arrested Mr. Mickels.”

“And you agree with her conclusions.”

“Well, I've come to the same ones.”

“With her help.”

“Ah, well, yes.”

“Maybe I should let you go and hire her instead.”

Mike forced a chuckle and said, “You can make the offer, but she won't even get a PI license. So no way will she agree
to carry a badge.” Then he offered his best crooked smile to show he knew they were both joking.

But it was also true. No way would she make it as a cop.

And a good thing. He and Elton had had enough trouble with Jill Cross Larson when she was a sergeant on the force; there was no way Elton could endure working with a crazy lady like Betsy Devonshire. Yes, she was a very clever lady, and sometimes a big help on a difficult case, but Betsy Devonshire was the proof that clinched his argument that females didn't belong as cops. She didn't think like a cop, and she didn't like the rules and restraints they worked under. Much better, to his way of thinking, that she stay in that needlework shop of hers and be free to only poke her oar in once in a widely separated while.

Betsy Devonshire, PI? That might be helpful, if only because the training would teach her the rules she would nevertheless continue to ignore. Detective Sergeant Betsy Devonshire? As if!

*   *   *

I
n
what had become a required ritual at the end of each case, Betsy Devonshire sat at the head of the library table in Crewel World while the Monday Bunch surrounded her, and Godwin sat at the foot.

“All right, girl,” said Bershada. “Give.”

“First of all, neither Chaz nor Joe had anything to do with these two deaths.”

“We knew that!” said Bershada.

“About Chaz, yes,” said Godwin. “About Joe, not so much.”

“So who did murder them?” asked Phil. “Did the same person do both of them in?”

“Of course not!” said Valentina. “Don't you remember that there were two very different methods? One was, like, break in, break things, break the man's skull; the other was sneaky. That
must
mean two different murderers.”

“Now, not necessarily,” said Alice. “It could have been that the murderer needed different methods because the victims were so different.”

Jill said, “Perhaps if we just sit quietly, Betsy will tell us how it happened.”

The others gave abashed laughs, then fell silent and looked at Betsy.

She said, “There's going to be a joint news conference tomorrow morning over in Wayzata, with Detective Sergeants Mike Malloy and Frank Larabee speaking, with backup from Chief Haugen and Chief Weil. They are going to announce that they are ‘satisfied' they have identified the murderers of Maddy O'Leary and Harry Whiteside—and it's each of them. Maddy murdered Harry, and Harry murdered Maddy.”

There was a stunned silence around the table.

“I don't see how,” said Emily. “How could Mr. Whiteside murder Maddy after he was already dead?”

“He poured the nicotine onto Maddy's yarn while it—and he—was at the music reception at Mount Calvary in the afternoon. Then he went home and surprised Maddy vandalizing his house, and she killed him.”

“
Maddy
was the one who burglarized him?” asked Valentina.

“Why?” asked Emily. “She wasn't poor; she didn't need any of his stuff.”

“I'm sure it will transpire that she took nothing. She
was exacting revenge for his vandalizing her cabin up in Pine County.”

Blank looks all around. Finally Doris ventured, “What cabin?”

“That cabin was the precipitating—if precipitating is the word I'm after—” She paused, then nodded, deciding it was, and continued. “Maddy and Harry have been at odds for a long time. They often ended up bidding on the same job or piece of property. Harry was richer, but Maddy was more clever—or at least less willing to aggravate and provoke the people she was working with. They might have gone on like that for years. But then Maddy found a piece of property for sale up in Pine County. It was on a lake that wasn't already surrounded by cabins, so it was nice and private. There was a raggedy old cabin already on the property, which she tore down and replaced with a beautiful one with indoor plumbing and electrical wiring.

“The problem was, that property and primitive cabin was originally owned by Harry's grandparents, and he had happy memories of summers spent up there. His plan was to buy and restore the cabin, complete with kerosene lamps and an outhouse. He tried for years to get it, without success—but Maddy happened to be up there a few years ago when the owner died suddenly, and his family immediately put it on the market. She snapped it up. People wondering where she went for her annual two weeks' vacation should have looked at lakeside rental cabins.

“Harry thought she deliberately outmaneuvered him to deny him his grandparents' land, but I can't find any evidence of that. Still, she was probably pleased when he accused her of it.

“Then, when she outbid him on the Water Street property, he totally lost his temper, went up there, and smashed the windows of her cabin. Chaz remembers Harry asking her about repairing some broken windows. He knew of no broken windows in her rental property and was surprised at her furious reaction. Harry was letting her know he was responsible for the damage to the cabin. So she went to his Wayzata home and began breaking things.”

“How did she get in?”

“Talk to Chaz; he'll tell you about how she taught him to bypass locks a tenant would put on without permission.”

“Why would he need to do that?” asked Emily, diverted.

Bershada said, “Chaz told me that sometimes people move out without leaving the keys. Sometimes they don't want their landlords to investigate because they're doing something illegal in their unit.”

Betsy said, “My problem is tenants making copies of their keys and handing them out to unauthorized people.

“But the point is, Maddy knew how to bypass locks.” Betsy made a sad face. “I've seen Harry's place; it's gorgeous and very expensively decorated. She could have done—she may have done thousands of dollars of damage very easily.

“But Harry walked in on her while she was there. And a very short fight ensued. Maddy wasn't injured. She probably had something in her hands she was using to break things and she struck him on the head with it. I don't know if she meant to kill him; it's possible she hit him in self-defense. But whatever, she left him dead on his kitchen floor.”

Jill said, “And you know she's the one who did this—how?”

“She came in here the Friday before the auction with more knitted toys, remember?”

They all nodded.

“And she had a Band-Aid on her finger.”

Godwin said, “Yes! I remember because the Band-Aid was red, white, and blue, and I'd set the door to play ‘Hail to the Chief.'”

Betsy said, “And whoever murdered Harry cut her finger on a projecting screw on a doorknob. A DNA test proved the blood left on the screw belonged to Maddy. That test proved she was in his house and there is no way on earth he would invite her to come for a visit. So why was she in there?”

Betsy sighed. “But Harry had already poisoned her yarn with nicotine he stole from the University's hazardous waste disposal facility when he went there to repair their fire-extinguishing system.”

“Mmmm-mmmm-mmmm,” said Bershada. “Nasty. Serious anger problems in both of them.”

Phil said, “But at least the anger was limited in its direction: strictly at each other.”

“The really hot anger was,” said Betsy, “but both of them were well-known for shouting at other people, some of whom didn't deserve it. All three of Harry's sons, for example, moved out of state to get away from him. And poor Chaz put up with an awful lot from Maddy, some of whose tenants would move out when they heard she'd bought their apartment building. Harry and Maddy were both accomplished, talented people, but they were by no means governed by sweetness and light.”